Executive Summary: Coolidge by Amity Shlaes

To anyone who has ever been dismayed by excessive government spending, Coolidge(Harper, 2013), Amity Shlaes’ revisionist biography of America’s 30th president, is a welcome corrective. Over some 500 pages we learn – repeatedly – that Coolidge was cheap…really, really cheap. This is a President who spent his time mandating that government employees turn in old pencil stubs before receiving new ones. An entire chapter is devoted to the 1924 federal budget, while only a few pages dwell on the sudden death of his teenage son. Shlaes, a Forbes columnist, is a gifted writer – an important consideration if you are thinking of spending this much time with a man who famously didn’t speak. The U.S. economy boomed under Silent Cal, but ultimately it’s impossible to tell if he was a visionary neoconservative economist or just a dour, penny-pinching Yankee. He certainly didn’t say.